Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Riot control methods:
What's in your riot's menu? How to deal with them? - Çağrı Mert
Bakırcı part 1.

The Turkish original
of this article, “İsyan
Kontrolünde Kullanılan Yöntemler ve Biyolojik Etkileri”,
signed Çağrı Mert Bakırcı, was published on
June 16th, 2013 in Evrim
Ağacı.org. The content of the article is as follows:
Introduction, The chemicals used in riot control and their biological
effects, Pressurized water, Water cannon, Armed vehicles, Scent-based
weapons, Pepper gas, Tear gas and its varieties, The expiration dates
of gases and their effects, Why we feel that the effect of the gases
change/increase, How to protect oneself, Batons, Conclusion.

We will divide the
article into parts and therefore restructure the sections for
presentational reasons. This text covers the sections below, the rest
will be available soon.

Introduction

Batons

Pressurized
water

Introduction

The uprising ignited
by the Gezi Park protests resulted in millions of people being
exposed to riot control methods such as baton violence, pepper gas
and pressurized water. But there are plenty of unanswered questions:
Which gases were used and how harmful are they? Is it possible that
the orange gas was used? Which chemicals were mixed to pressurized
water? What is to be done when one's exposed to any of these?

“Riot
control refers to the measures used by police, military, or
other security forces to control, disperse, and arrest civilians who
are involved in a riot, demonstration, or protest. If a riot is
spontaneous and irrational, actions which cause people to stop and
think for a moment (e.g. loud noises or issuing instructions in a
calm tone) can be enough to stop it. However, these methods usually
fail when there is severe anger with a legitimate cause, or the riot
was planned or organized. Law enforcement officers or soldiers have
long used less lethal weapons such as batons and whips to disperse
crowds and detain rioters. Since the 1980s, riot control officers
have also used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and electric
tasers. In some cases, riot squads may also use Long Range Acoustic
Devices, water cannons, armoured fighting vehicles, aerial
surveillance, police dogs or mounted police on horses. Officers
performing riot control typically wear protective equipment such as
riot helmets, face visors, body armor (vests, neck protectors, knee
pads, etc.), gas masks and riot shields. However, there are also
cases where lethal weapons are used to violently suppress a protest
or riot, as in the Boston Massacre, Haymarket Massacre, Banana
Massacre, Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Kent State Massacre, Soweto
Uprising, Mendiola Massacre, Bloody Sunday (1972) and Tiananmen
Square Massacre.”

Within the scope of
this article, we will not deal with lethal weapons but focus only on
the chemicals that may still lead to loss of biological integrity and
death. Many types of chemicals are used all around the world in riot
control. While not all of them are lethal weapons, some do lead to
death and are therefore monitored and prohibited by international
law.

We would like to
start with a remark. Below, we will talk about various chemical
gases. In fact, almost none of these are actual gases, they are all
aerosols. In order to avoid confusions, we will still call them
“gas”.

“A truncheon
or baton (also called a cosh, billystick, billy
club, nightstick, sap, blackjack, stick)
is essentially a club of less than arm's length made of wood,
plastic, or metal. They are carried for forced compliance and
self-defense by law-enforcement officers, correctional staff,
security-industry employees and (less often) military personnel.
Other uses for truncheons and batons include crowd control or the
dispersal of belligerent or non-compliant targets.”

In general,
non-expandable straight stick is used in police interventions. It is
produced of polyurethane plastic and contains a fiber stick of 10 mm
radius. Its length is 65 cm and its handle is 13 cm long. It is 3 cm
thick. Clearly, these numbers are approximations and they can vary
from type to type and from producer to producer.

There is also the
T-baton which has an additional side-handle.

As can be seen in the
images, the batons can be made of wood or metal too. Besides these,
there exist expandable (or telescoping) batons made of metal.

We find the technical
details rather irrelevant for our purposes. We would like to explain
the effects of a baton strike:

A baton strike,
depending on its impact, can easily break your bones or seriously
damage your organs (like your eyes, nose, mouth, chin or teeth) as
well as resulting in temporary bruises. The immediate result of a
strong baton strike is the destruction of the capillary vessels
feeding the tissues at the point of strike. As a result, a small
amount of blood fills into the tissues and lead to reddening and then
to a purple bruise. In later days, this purple area becomes blue,
then yellow or green, and finally the tissue is fully recovered. This
change of color is due to density changes in hemoglobin,
methemoglobin and sulfhemoglobin within the vessels. At least 5 grams
of hemoglobin in 100 mm blood is needed to trigger a typical bruise.
In anemic individuals the bruising may delay as the amount of
hemoglobin is positively correlated to the speed of bruising.

There can be tingling
and ache in the recovery period. If the impact is strong, more
serious problems may arise. Hence, if you feel that your experience
is abnormal, we recommend you to get medical support as soon as
possible. Put ice cubes on the area for at least 10 minutes. This
would help to stop or slow down the bleeding in the vessels and
thereby you would be able to reduce the bruises.

Pressurized
Water

As known, water of
high pressure produces a non-point impact and can help to disperse
protesters. An average water cannon can carry 8000 liters of water
and can spray water at a speed of 15 liters per second. Therefore, a
nonstop spraying in 10 minutes would empty its tank. The important
point here is that a focused spraying of a liquid in such speed can
seriously harm bodily organs. Therefore the operator should target at
the feet or the legs of the protesters. Yet, as is seen in Turkey,
security staff does not worry about such “technicalities” and
target at the protesters' heads or chests. Such practices push
protesters back severely in such a way that it even rolls them over.
The primary effects of such a strike are heart attacks and neck
fractures. Moreover, if pressurized water hits the eye, it can cause
loss of sight or blindness. Therefore, usage of water in riot control
is not as innocent as initially thought.

To avoid such
effects, the responsibility is on the security forces. In case police
forces are not properly controlled, those who are within the range
should come nearer to the water cannon in order to pass the minimum
range. (The range starts by 1 meter away from the vehicle.)
Alternatively, the protesters should use obstacles or hide behind an
object to reduce the impact. Otherwise, they can be subject to
permanent damage.

There is an
essentially important aspect of water usage in riot control: The
water sprayed from water cannons is not necessarily pure water.
Sometimes, chemicals are added to the mixture. These chemicals are
acid and, as we will explain in further on, their effect is similar
to pepper gas. Therefore, it is not strange that the sprayed water
results in reddening, dermatitis and infections. The critical issue
is the portion of chemicals in water, because increasing the amount
of chemical can result in serious and permanent damage in
individuals.

Some micro-particles
can also be added to the water mixture to increase the corrosive
effect. Like small sand particles, these micro-particles may result
in cuts or corrosion in the skin. Hence one should not consider
pressurized water as harmless.

In the next section,
we will take a closer look at water cannons and examine other armed
vehicles used in riot control.